Despite the increase in employment from 11.3 million in March 2003 to 13.6 million in March 2009 and the attendant decline in unemployment rate from 31.2 percent to 23.5 percent over the same period, the country has witnessed massive job losses in the recent months, says the report, released on Friday.
According to the Development Indicators, 267 000 jobs were lost in the second quarter of 2009.
[Justice and Constitutional Development Deputy Minister Andries] Nel says the South African Law Reform Commission will only publish a report with final legislative proposals in 2011. This comes after several role players debated the legalisation of adult sex work at a seminar at Unisa in Pretoria today. Nel says the legalisation of adult sex work must not be linked to the World Cup.
An appeal had thus been made to FIFA and its partners to make a contribution to reducing the spectacle's carbon footprint as it did in Germany, reported Western Cape premier Helen Zille on Thursday.
At the announcement of a progress report on Cape Town's Green Goal Action Plan for the tournament she pointed out that the carbon emissions would moreover affect the entire globe.
Steps need to be taken to involve everybody who has a stake in 2010 in the Green Goal Action Plan and its objectives.
"National Treasury has informed me of the projected shortfalls for the 2010 FIFA World Cup stadiums. The total shortfall on the six new stadiums is 2.33 billion rand as of July 2009," Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said in a written response to a question in parliament.
The proposal has raised fears of a return to "apartheid-era policing", with officers having the right to shoot fleeing suspects in the back.
The change in tone has come with the appointment of a new national police commissioner, Bheki Cele, who has been called a "cowboy" with a penchant for pinstripe suits and panama hats.
The plain-speaking Cele has called for a change in legislation that would allow police to open fire on suspects without having to worry about "what happens after that".
Western Cape taxi bosses have given Transport Minister S'bu Ndebele one month to halt the roll-out of the integrated rapid transit (IRT) system in Cape Town - or face having key infrastructural projects destroyed.
Taxi drivers would take to the streets "en masse", warned provincial National Taxi Alliance (NTA) spokesman Mvuyisi Mente, and destroy "every action of the government" ahead of the World Cup.
Despite a 3% drop in the murder rate, police statistics revealed an increase in sex offences, including rape, as well as a dramatic rise in burglaries.
In Rustenburg, tipped to be the England squad's base, cases of sex crimes, assault, robbery with aggravating circumstances and kidnapping all increased on the previous year.
Reported sex crimes also increased in the police precincts of Cape Town central, Durban central, Johannesburg central, Nelspruit, Polokwane, and Pretoria central, which are all certain to receive football supporters from around the world.
The South African government announced their latest crime figures on Tuesday with overall cases seeing a small rise, but murders dropping by 3.2%. The government reported that 18,148 people were killed in the 12 months up to March.
Police chief Bheki Cele announced his force was determined to further reduce the murder rate as the eyes of the world begin to turn to South Africa ahead of FIFA's showpiece event.
Terminal 2010, the multimillion-rand central terminal building under construction at Cape Town International Airport, is to be opened on November 7 - months before schedule, the Airports Company of South Africa (Acsa) says.
Construction of the R1,5-billion, five-storey terminal is more than 90 percent complete.
The terminal has 120 check-in counters, 20 self-service check-in machines, eight air bridges, 11 bus gates, and an automated baggage sorting system.
The Bureau for Market Research's (BMR's) analyst Carel van Aardt said last week that the 475000 job losses are likely to have affected most of those black South Africans earning between R100000 and R300000 a year.
"First indications are that a lot of the gains in living standards between 2000 and last year, particularly in the African group, have been seriously impacted on," Van Aardt said last week.
People had often asked him if the shacks and street children would be removed, [2010 Fifa World Cup organising committee chief executive Danny Jordaan] said.
"No, we can't be a society that misleads and creates a false impression. We are a country of diversity, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, and the world must know that we have massive challenges of poverty and housing and we must address these issues."
Shiny new red and blue buses will now compete with dilapidated mini-buses and ageing trains that currently provide the backbone of South Africa's limping public transportation.
Under apartheid, the government intentionally created non-white neighbourhoods far from city centres to make it difficult for people of different races to mix.
Now transportation is a daily struggle for millions of commuters, and one of the main issues the government is trying to resolve ahead of the 2010 football World Cup.